In Connecticut, 'Preppers' Are Ready For Anything

Millions of "preppers" across the country gather food, water, and medication to prepare for a natural or man-made disaster.

Those familiar with the underground movement say some preppers go so far as to set up shelters, including bunkers fully equipped with showers, toilets and generators that cost up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Bob Harris, owner and operator of Harris Outdoors, an Old Saybrook shop that caters to survivalists, says there are varying degrees of preppers.

The "fanatical preppers" may have a regular job, but when they get home at night, they're shopping on the Internet for freeze-dried food with a 25-year shelf life — and will stock up 90 to 120 days worth of it, along with matches and other items that will help them survive without electricity for months, according to Harris, 45, who also works as a firefighter and emergency medical technician in Old Saybrook and Westbrook. Perhaps gas masks and bio-hazard suits would be on their shopping lists.

"Some of your people are definitely lunatics," said Adam Palmer, who organizes meetings of prepper groups with more than 300 members.

At least one retired military man, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, has gone through the extreme of burying a bunker — believed to be a cargo container made of corrugated metal — in his Connecticut backyard, according to Harris.

"He would flog me if I said anything," Harris said.

The "serious preppers," who "seem to be pretty educated people," might store weeks of food, bottled water, water-purification systems, First Aid kits, portable stoves, waterproof matches, fire-starters, "Quick Clot" that can prevent a person from bleeding to death, and other supplies in their homes just in case something disastrous does occur, Harris said. He sells survival knives imported from Russia, Sweden and El Salvador; and tactical LED flashlights that can last for up to 10 years.

"You have something like the zombie apocalypse or something devastating happens, and your flashlight dies, Wal-Mart isn't in business anymore," Harris said, "That one tool you have to rely on because it could be your life, literally."

Others don't — or can't — take prepping as seriously.

John Pavel, 38, a fitness instructor who lives in Wallingford, said he became a prepper about five years ago over concern about peak oil and energy depletion. A member of a prepper network, he also sees climate change as a problem, but feels a pandemic or nuclear incident is unlikely.

Pavel says he doesn't have a basement full of food, but he is taking measures to protect himself should disaster strike. Among other things, he has an organic garden and he's learning First Aid. With the help of another prepper he met on line, he's built a "solar power food cooker" with a glass jar, aluminum foil and a large funnel -- and cooked raw fish in it.

"I don't have the time or money to go the lengths of some people," he said.